CLICK
THE "HOME" TAB ON ANY PAGE IN THIS SITE
TO RETURN TO THE MAIN NAVIGATIONAL PAGE
OR CHOOSE FROM THE LEFT NAV MENU[TVOTW
Insert - If the destination page or web site for the link below does
not function - it has either been removed or closed down on
the orders or instructions of persons or entities unknown to TVOTWfor reasons that can only be speculated upon - having
regard to the content or revelations contained herein.]

This will be a big week
for Iraq and all those who wish to bomb it. Since last summer's heady
excitements, when George Bush seemed ready to go Saddam-hunting all
on his ownsome, Washington hawks and assorted
birds of prey have endured a series of false dawns.

First there was
their rising hope that the UN security council, challenged by Bush in
September to put up or shut up, would fail to agree a common course
of action. That would have left the way clear for the US, claiming prior
authority, to fire at will. But resolution 1441, passed on November
8 and mandating resumed weapons inspections, frustrated beaky avian
hopes of early morning glory.

Next came the seven-day
deadline for Iraq's full, unconditional acceptance of the UN's onerous
new rules. Vultures gathering on the Potomac shore figured the terms
were just too tough. Maybe Saddam could live with foreign busybodies
clutching clipboards and bleeping gadgets zooming around the country
like so many misguided Scuds. Maybe Iraq's famously paranoid dictator
would be able, just, to ignore the humiliating media circus that followed
the UN parade.

But surely even
he, grimly locked though he is into best behaviour mode, would baulk
at the prospect of Hans Blix plodding portentously through presidential
palace boudoirs, magnifying glass in hand like a latterday Holmes, looking
for the dog that didn't bark? No sir. Slippery Saddam disappointed them
all. He met the deadline with time to spare and, in febrile US imaginings
at least, went off to run an acid bath.

It's been tough
being a hawk since then. Every time Bush suggested the UN inspection
regime was up the spout already, that annoying Kofi Annan popped up
to say it was all going fine. The more Donald Rumsfeld sent his bombers
into southern Iraq, defending Shia human rights by
blowing up their airports and killing their men, the
more wimpy Euro-appeasers shouted foul.

There was minor
consolation to be had in exposing the tawdry sex life of one UN inspector,
in rubbishing Blix's professional qualifications, in playing soldiers
in Qatar and conjuring spurious links between
Iraq and al-Qaida. But when Saddam met his next deadline,
the December 8 production of a dossier detailing his weapons of mass
destruction (or rather, his lack of them), it seemed like all the fun
was going out of this war before it had even got going. For thwarted
Saddam-bashers, the whole process was turning out to be, well, too damn
reasonable.

Sadly, help for
the hawks is at hand - and reason is about
to be suspended. In fact, reason, along with rational
thought, objective analysis and calm, considered discourse are about
to be gassed, bombed, anthraxed, poxed and nuked.

The US and the
four other permanent security council members have now had a week to
dissect Iraq's dossier. They have also,
scandalously, had a chance to edit and censor it, omitting
in all probability Iraq's embarrassing
list of western arms suppliers along with other inconvenient facts.
On Thursday, Blix will submit his initial analysis of the declaration
to the council. Whatever he says, that will also trigger the US and
Britain's full, formal "preliminary" assessments.

No prizes in this
doomsday guessing game: we already know what they'll say, since they've
already said it. To cut a very long story short, our
elected representatives and people's tribunes will solemnly intone,
Iraq's voluminous dossier is lies, lies, videotape, and more lies
(without the sex).

With this 12,000-page
piece of recycled hocus-pocus, Saddam has proved he is not serious.
By sins of omission, they will claim, Saddam
has refused to disarm. By this irresponsible action,
this unrepentant prince of darkness, this evil axle, this arch-foe of
the free and the brave, this serial abuser of Kurds, Iranians and Kuwaitishas, regrettably, brought war very much closer.

A pattern
of non-compliance is developing, the US will assert.
UN interviews of Iraqi scientists will be the next test.

But on the banks
of the Potomac, at the Pentagon, at Langley and in the Oval office,
the hawks will not really be sad at all. Their perch-bound penury is
near an end. Now just watch them fly and soar! And just listen for their
battle-cry, as from England's Henry before Harfleur: "Once more
unto the material breach, dear friends, once more! For America and King
George!" Oh, and for democracy, too.

Cock your B52s;
unholster your bunker busters; let loose the doggerel of war. For this
week the countdown to conflict may begin in earnest.

For all the on-off
hopes of a peaceful outcome, this avoidable, illogical denouement should
come as no surprise. Unreason permeates
every aspect of Bush's slow-burn, post-Afghanistan campaign against
Iraq. Unreason is the warlord now and is now unleashed.
For just consider.

Bush says people
planning to use weapons of mass destruction are the big global threat.
So Washington has pledged itself to pre-emptive,
any-time use of weapons of mass destruction if provoked.
Is that reasonable or what?

Bush says he has
no quarrel with the Iraqi people. But for
a decade the US starved and impoverished those same people
with unleavened sanctions. Now, taking
the direct approach, it is willing to kill them outright
in order to "liberate"
them.

Bush says Iraq
is but part of his wider "war on terror". But while he plots
Saddam's downfall, al-Qaida is plotting his (and maybe ours). Bush surely
knows that nuclear-arming, desperate North Korea and its ballistically
unstable "Dear Leader" present a far greater, wider and immediate
threat than Iraq's rusting Scuds and mutinous army. But do his eyes
turn from the gates of Baghdad? No, they do not.

Bush says he fights
for democracy, in Iraq and beyond. No matter, apparently, that the US,
not trusting the Iraqis with their own
country, plans to install a US-confected military government
or perhaps, a carefully vetted, pro-American puppet show, and tramples
civil liberties at home.

Bush says that
in his coming battle, he has a host of friends and allies. Butmost have been bought, bullied or destabilised into bogus solidarity.
Bush's moralistic war will set a woeful precedent for an immoral era
of "pre-emptive" intervention.

As long as the
UN inspections continue, there is still a chance to stop this war. Maybe
the French or Russians will dig in, will demand stronger evidence of
Iraqi cheating going beyond the US's highly suspect dossier deductions.
Maybe Blix and Annan will baulk. Maybe Colin Powell can hold the diplomatic
line a little longer. All the same, this
could be the week when the irrational becomes irresistible.
Now, in dread, deadly prospect, is the dawning age of unreason. Or,
as Byron put it:

"This
is the patent age of new inventions
For killing bodies, and for saving souls,
All propagated with the best intentions."

(In
accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed
without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving
the included information for research and educational purposes.)

______________________________________________

THE
FOUNDATION, INSPIRATION, EMPATHY AND SPIRIT
WITH WHICH TVOTW WAS CONCEIVED AND BUILT UPON
RESIDES WITH THE FOLLOWING EVERLASTING PRINCIPLE

- "LOVE CONQUERS ALL THINGS" -

______________________________________________

"IF
YOU WANT OTHERS TO BE HAPPY, PRACTICE COMPASSION. IF YOU WANT TO BE
HAPPY, PRACTICE COMPASSION."

- DALAI LAMA -

______________________________________________

"YOU
NEVER KNOW WHAT THE OUTCOME IS - BUT THE TRUTH IS ALWAYS THE BEST PLACE
TO START"

- JULIAN ASSANGE -

______________________________________________

-
FAMOUS QUOTE -

"Human
beings are the only creatures on earth that claim a God - and the only
living thing that behaves like it hasn't got one."